Jurassic World: Next of Kin
by Jeune Ecrivain
Summary: While on a dinosaur recovery mission, Owen and Zia discover a secretive BioSyn compound where the company's rivalry with InGen has led them to blur the line between man and beast (but not in the way you're probably thinking). Post-FK.


**Jurassic World: Next of Kin**

 **By Jeune Ecrivain**

 **Rating: T (just to be safe)  
**

 **Summary: While on a dinosaur recovery mission, Owen and Zia discover a secretive BioSyn compound where the company's rivalry with InGen has led them to blur the line between man and beast (but not in the way you're probably thinking). Post-FK.**

 **AN: This may start off a bit slow, with some introspection into the dynamic between Owen, Claire, and Maisie, but given the popularity of the Clawen ship, that probably won't be a problem for many of you. You might also notice me trying to better rationalize Maisie's decision to unleash the dinosaurs on California. Personally, I thought that was a really stupid and damaging move on the writers' part, since it basically put human blood on the hands of an otherwise innocent and endearing character that I'd really rather not associate with such a thoughtless action. I understand wanting to save the dinosaurs, but in a zero-sum situation where saving them inevitably means the loss of at least a few human lives, letting the dinosaurs die is clearly the lesser evil, and even a nine- or ten-year-old girl, clone or not, should've easily known that. Heck, I'm even disappointed in Claire for actually having to pause before she got her priorities straight. So I did my best to absolve Maisie of such an otherwise callous decision within the constraints of movie canon. From there, we transition (hopefully smoothly) to the main plot premise.**

Owen Grady preferred the warmth of home as much as anyone, but he had probably never been more impatient for a bout of field work to end as he was now. As a navy officer turned trainer and researcher at a unique zoo that housed genetically engineered dinosaurs, he had been one of the first people recruited by the government to contain and neutralize the threat posed by the de-extinct creatures that had been set loose on the world by mankind's latest display of exploitative hubris. He did not entirely trust the joint federal/state task force, but he and his girlfriend Claire Dearing had decided that they had best strike a bargain with the authorities. They both would have been inclined to aid in cleaning up the mess for which they felt partially responsible anyway, but the latest Jurassic disaster had left Maisie Lockwood, an orphaned ten-year-old, in their care. So until the red tape between them and the girl's hefty inheritance could be surmounted, decent support for the child demanded greater financial security than any freelance options could reasonably provide.

Part of the deal was that, to the greatest extent possible, he would remain in California, tracking the dinosaurs that had escaped from an illegal auction there rather than going abroad in pursuit of those that had been successfully sold and shipped away. He needed to stay local so that he could rebuild his relationship with the woman he loved, an already non-negotiable undertaking which had taken on extra importance with Maisie now part of the equation. She had already been through so much and become quite attached to both Claire and Owen. Despite his and Claire's better judgment at such an early stage, the adults could not bring themselves to resist slipping into increasingly parental roles. They were certainly the closest thing the youngster currently had to a mother and father, and given her unusual origins, they may have been the closest thing she had ever had in her life. In any case, another break-up for any but the most incorrigible reason was simply out of the question with Maisie in the midst. Plus, the trio all depended on each other for emotional and moral support after the trauma they had all survived, especially Maisie, and the discovery that she was actually a clone of her so-called grandfather's deceased daughter was not even the worst of it.

The young girl had been the one to release the dinosaurs that remained after the auction in order to rescue them from fatally noxious fumes that were overtaking the underground lair. Owen and Claire soon learned that she had vastly overestimated the likelihood of the authorities successfully containing the creatures before they reached civilization. To someone of her stature living a life as secluded as hers apparently was, the wilderness surrounding the mansion probably looked much larger in area than it was, and in addition to that, her faith in governmental efficacy was likely inflated by the naivete of youth. When Claire hesitated and ultimately decided not to open the life-saving doors herself, Maisie had also mistaken her reluctance as concern for what the villains potentially lurking outside might still do to the dinosaurs instead of what they themselves would almost certainly do to civilians.

When the already battered child realized that she had all but guaranteed that at least a few innocent humans would be devoured, trampled, or otherwise killed before the animals could be recovered, she had quickly descended into hot tears of crushing guilt. As much as he wanted to, Owen could not deny that, in some sense, there was indeed human blood on her hands, but especially after she revealed her fateful misunderstandings, both he and Claire felt truly confident in absolving her. The mistake itself was something from which she should and certainly would learn a hard lesson, but the disproportionately horrific nature of its consequences was far from her fault. The blame in that regard lay squarely on a combination of sheer circumstances and the greedy goons who had brought the dinosaurs to the mainland in the first place. Yet even in Maisie's deep feelings of guilt there was a silver lining to be found. The couple's efforts to soothe their young ward proved very therapeutic in helping them assuage their own sense of culpability, especially Claire, who even then still had occasional flare-ups of self-blame from the first disaster at Jurassic World.

For both Claire and Owen, it was both heartwarming and intimidating how quickly Maisie was drawing out parental instincts and feelings they never knew they were capable of. Owen was never sure he had a paternal bone in his body. On her part, Claire still remembered how her detachment from her nephews Zach and Gray had inadvertently contributed to their grave endangerment during the catastrophic Jurassic World opening. She had since developed a very close bond with the boys, but Owen suspected that she sometimes still wondered if she really had any business aspiring to motherhood when, in her view at least, she had only recently become decent at mere aunthood.

Nevertheless, he could see his girlfriend's confidence as an unofficial parent building along with his own every day. Maybe, just maybe, they could do this. In any event, the more time they could all spend together, the better. That is why Owen especially regretted finding himself on a remote island off the east coast of Africa. If for no other reason than to make sure he stayed safe, Claire would have been by his side had he not convinced her to stay behind. His main motivation was to keep her safe, but the reason he offered to Claire herself was Maisie. No matter how willing Claire's sister Karen was to babysit, they decided it just was not worth it for both of them to abruptly leave the child for the first time since the latest dinosaur-related incident. Anyway, perhaps he should have been grateful that he had even managed to entirely avoid an international mission for this long, but he still found himself with a tranquilizer gun in one hand and his mobile in the other, briefly gazing at the photo of a smiling Claire and Maisie that adorned the background of the phone's main screen, before returning his attention to the task at hand.

Not only was he hundreds of miles away from his quasi-family, he was there under circumstances much more mysterious than he would have preferred. The rogue ankylosaurus sighting had been reported by none other than BioSyn, longtime bitter rival of InGen, the company responsible for resurrecting the dinosaurs. To make matters even stranger, the call had come in personally from Dr. Gary Trenner, a primatologist and old college friend of Zia Rodriguez, the Dinosaur Protection Group's resident paleoveterinarian and essentially Claire's right-hand woman. How the ankylosaur had gone from the clutches of an illicit international arms dealer to roaming free on some isolated piece of BioSyn property was anyone's guess at that point, but it had apparently rampaged through their facilities on the island and caused some serious asset damage. A hand-wringing Gary met them on the shore with a single muddy jeep. He was a mousy man with short blonde hair dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. As he approached with Zia and the two federal agents the task force had to spare, Owen noticed how tired the young scientist looked.

"Zia, it's great to see you again!" said Gary. "I only wish it was under better circumstances."

"It's been a long time, Gary," Zia replied wryly. "What have you got for us? Where'd you last see the dino?"

"Straight to the point as usual," the scientist observed with a sigh and a nod. "Come with me. It's a short ride to the compound where your behemoth was last seen."

Owen could hear the thinly veiled resentment in the doctor's voice but said nothing as the five of them piled into the rugged vehicle and sped off across the grasslands. As promised, they were approaching a large BioSyn outpost in about ten minutes, during which Dr. Trenner recounted the basics of what had happened. Apparrently, the ankylosaurus had appeared within a few yards of the building one day and started grazing. Many of the staff paused and looked on in awe. Product of their competitor or not, any extant dinosaur was still a sight to behold. That awe turned to terror when the distant bray of what sounded like an elephant spooked the creature. In its panic, the tank-like dinosaur's huge mace of a tail had collided with the north wall of the edifice, and as it fled, its shoulder dealt another blow before it finally passed the facility and ran off. The property damage was the least of BioSyn's worries, since the collisions had happened in just the right places to break a very dangerous asset out of containment, and tragically, several staff members were now dead or severely injured. Owen's nascent unease grew when Gary's otherwise detailed account became quite vague when discussing the "asset" that had been accidentally released.

The team's hopes that the ankylosaur just might return to the scene of the crime were dashed as a compound that would not have looked out of place in the behind-the-scenes sectors of Jurassic World came within eyeshot. However, there was some life lurking about. As they drew closer, Owen heard Gary curse under his breath as they noticed what looked like an unusually light-haired chimpanzee wandering around surprisingly close to the building, clearly curious, almost as if it was somewhat familiar territory. Owen began to wonder if that was in fact the case. "Do any of your 'assets' include chimps?"

"Uh,…" was all Gary managed to say before Zia spoke up.

"Wait," she said, signaling her colleague to stop the vehicle and climbing out once he did. They were still several yards away, but that was apparently close enough for the paleoveterinarian to get a good look at the primate. She shielded her eyes from the sun and watched as it took several steps of its own, tentatively venturing further away from the building. There was definitely something off about those steps. They were too bipedal. Zia knew enough about the great apes to know that it was not unheard of for them to walk upright for relatively short stretches, but this was something different. It lacked the distinctly waddling gait of a creature not really built to do more than dabble in bipedalism.

"I'm no expert on monkeys," said Owen, "but I don't think chimps walk like that."

"They don't," Zia confirmed. She turned and was about to question Gary when she gasped and nearly fell to the ground as something too large and too close for comfort leapt out of the grass in a flash. Before she knew it, what looked like the biggest lioness she'd ever seen was hovering over the strange simian, now bloody and writhing as the predator prepared to deliver the final bite to its neck.

"Shoot it! Now!" cried Gary, sounding far more concerned about the ape's fate than one might expect.

Owen snapped out of his stupor just in time to aim his tranquilizer gun and fire. The hulking carnivore lurched immediately on impact and emitted a mighty roar before wavering dizzily and collapsing in just a few seconds. Gary was sprinting towards the scene even slightly before anyone else would have advised it, and all of them blinked a couple of times before finding their feet and running after him.

"She's alive! Oh, thank God!" Hands shaking, Dr. Trenner examined the primate as gently as he could. "It's okay, girl!" he intoned as the creature let out a weak whimper. "We're gonna get you patched up!"

Owen stared briefly at the ape before turning his attention to the unconscious carnivore, and Zia followed his gaze. On closer inspection, there was definitely something off about this "lioness" as well. Its shoulders and forelimbs were noticeably taller and bulkier than its hindquarters, and it had a very short neck. The most outstanding feature, however, were its upper canines, which were massive and far out of proportion for its jaw. In fact, the lower lip was actually deformed on each side into a kind of sheath for each sword-like tooth. They were like…

"Sabers," Zia breathed.

Owen's mouth formed a tight line as he turned to face Gary. "Do you want to tell us what the hell's goin' on here?!"

Within minutes, the team had gathered in an intact laboratory within the BioSyn compound. The hulk of a cat was promptly carted away to a "secure" location. Owen was not sure he trusted their notion of security, but for the time being at least, he figured they were safe to fry bigger fish. The ape now laying on a long chrome table with a blanket hastily thrown over it, Zia wasted no time in demanding any and all medical imaging equipment they had and began examining the primate's injuries, doing her best not to cause it any more pain. Owen sat in a plastic chair with folded arms looking expectantly at Gary, while the government agents stood at either side of the main door. Finally, a very defeated Dr. Trenner leaned against a computer console and met Owen's gaze.

"When InGen cloned their first dinosaurs, we knew we had to up our game. At first, we tried to replicate what they were doing, but after the park went to hell the first time back in the '90s, we shifted gears a bit. Unlike InGen, we weren't going to make the same mistakes."

"Of course not," Zia oozed sarcasm without even looking up from her work. "You'd just make all new ones."

Gary chose to ignore her. "Their mistake was cloning giant proto-avian reptiles that were far more dangerous than they were worth. What if we just went smaller and a bit closer to home, so to speak? So first, we re-directed our research towards developing artificial wombs and synthetic mammalian milk."

"So let me get this straight," Zia spoke up, still not redirecting her gaze at all from the X-ray device that had just been brought to her. "You develop a way to completely gestate mammals outside of any female bodies, and whatever you've cooked up here is the first thing you can think to do with that tech? You don't even consider the potential for, oh, I don't know, solving the whole abortion debate in one go? Think about it. Women would keep their reproductive rights, but at the same time, that wouldn't mean having to kill fetuses anymore! Pro-lifers and pro-choicers could both be happy! But no! You just had to get the jump on InGen!"

Gary allowed himself a dry chuckle. "Only you could make this political, Zia." He then cleared his throat under the glares of Owen and the two men at the door. "Anyway, the sabertooth was one of the first, a kind of proof-of-concept, if you will, and..." He was cut off by the ring of his cell phone, and he winced as he retrieved it from his pocket. "That'll be my boss," he practically groaned. "Excuse me."

The eyes of the two federal agents met before shifting to Owen, who met their gaze himself and nodded in silent communication. They then left their post for the hallway, where they kept a minimally respectful distance from Dr. Trenner while also keeping him within their vigilant sight. The conversation carried on for quite a while, but apparently, nothing was said or done that raised any eyebrows and prompted the government men to report anything to Owen, and he trusted them just that much. One of them briefly reappeared with a smirk on his face to reassure him and Zia that it was basically just a frazzled employee being grilled by his superior, and Owen could not help but share his mirth.

In the meantime, Zia stabilized the unconscious simian, announcing that she would most likely live to see another day, though dumb luck played a big part in that prognosis. The most pressing concern now resolved for the time being, she examined the freshly produced full-body X-ray scans, to both check for broken bones and look for clues as to the exact nature of her primate patient. "Well, this is definitely not a chimpanzee," she concluded wearily. "This thing was built to walk upright. The pelvis looks closer to human than chimp, and the spine enters the skull at the bottom instead of in the back."

"So what are you thinking?"

Zia sighed and stared thoughtfully at the creature. "As far as I can tell, there are two possibilities, and even though I'm not exactly thrilled at the thought of either option, I hope to God it's not the first."

"You think it might be a hybrid." It was more of a statement than a question.

The paleovet replied with a foreboding nod. "During the Cold War, Russia tossed around the idea of breeding a human with a chimp to create some sort of freakish super-soldier. A decade or two later, there was this upright walker named Oliver who many people suspected to be an actual chuman or humanzee. Genetic testing finally proved he was pure chimp, just a very unusual one. Still, given how heated the InGen/BioSyn rivalry is, I'm not sure I'd put it past BioSyn to try doing what neither InGen nor the Soviets could do." She pursed her lips. "What Gary said about not needing surrogates really made me suspicious. Why would they skip right to pursuing non-surrogate mammal cloning? Then it hit me. No woman in her right mind would consent to birthing a chimp/human hybrid, and depending on how much they could predict its exact features, it may have been risky to use a female chimp. If it happened to have a more human-like head, it probably wouldn't fit through the birth canal, which might've endangered the lives of both mother and baby."

"Could it just be another chimp like Oliver?" Owen asked.

Zia shook her head. "I doubt it. Even though she looks mostly like a chimp, on closer inspection, there are a few more subtle things about her that don't match what you'd expect if that's what she was. Besides the obvious bipedalism, that is."

Owen nodded. "So what's the second possibility?" he ventured, though he already had an inkling.

Zia sighed, pursed her lips once more, and uttered a single-word response. "Lucy."

Owen was about to ask for clarification and likely would have realized her meaning himself in another second or two, but Gary chose that moment to announce his return.

"I knew it wouldn't take long for you to figure it out," he said softly as he leaned against the doorframe. "I still wonder if you would've made the better primatologist between the two of us." He looked like the very picture of resignation as he re-entered the room and tapped a few keys on the computer console he had previously been leaning against. What looked like a database record appeared on screen, featuring an image and description of the very animal whose life had just been narrowly saved.

" _Australopithecus afarensis_ ," Dr. Trenner confirmed. "Not a direct precursor of ours. That would be her close cousin _africanus_. But she is one of the earliest and most well-known species on the unique branch of the ape family that eventually led to us. InGen may have dinosaurs, but we have the milestones of human evolution!"

 **AN: This was a plot bunny that was gestating in my head for quite some time now, and I'm honestly surprised that nobody else to my knowledge has experimented with this notion. It might even make a good sequel, almost like if _Jurassic Park_ and _Planet of the Apes_ had a love child. If you know of any other stories that play with this idea, please let me know. I'd love to read them!**


End file.
